By Etienne Stekelenburg
April 2 2003

Argentinian Paola Suarez ousted top seed and defending champion Jelena Dokic at the Sarasota Open in Florida USA. The 19 year old Yugoslav was beaten in two straight sets 6-3 6-3. 4th seed Sugiyama and 8th seed Panova were also lost their first round against Conchita Martinez and Iroda Tulyaganova. Jelena Dokic could not keep up the form she had reaching the quarter-finals of the Nasdaq-100 Open last week in Miami. She seems to be falling into the habbits she was in at the beginning of the season.

Paola Suarez needed just a little over the hour to send the ninth-ranked Dokic back to the locker room in defeat and she didn’t leave her any chance to come back in the match 6-3 6-3

“All my life I play on clay and I feel a lot more comfortable on it,” Suarez said. “I'm glad I played Jelena in the first round than after she played a couple of matches on this surface” She made use of the surface she grew up with and played soft shots to outsmart her hard hitting opponent.

Dokic said she was very dissapointed with the outcome of the match hitting too many errors and giving away too many free points.”That is the way it goes sometimes” she added.

Conchita Martinez from Spain celebrated her return with the clay court with a victory over fourth seed Ai Sugiyama from Japan. Being raised on Spanish clay courts Martinez had no problems dealing with Sugiyama beating her 6-2 7-5.

Uzbekistan’s Iroda Tulyaganova defeats Tatiana Panova who played last years finals against the winner Jelena Dokic. Iroda Tulyaganova defeated Russian Panova for the fourth straight time 6-3
7-5.

Anastasia Myskina of Russia crushed French Emilie Loit 6-0 6-3 after having some bad results in previous tournaments.

Elena Dementieva had to step it up to beat Slovenia’s Tina Pisnik. The fifth seed Dementieva lost the first set but could turn the score into her advantage in the second and third set 3-6 6-4 6-1.

Iva Majoli needed three sets to defeat Anna Kournikova who now lost four out of five matches this season. Majoli won 6-4 4-6 6-4 and will be next up against Iroda Tulyaganova.